L.A. workers developing 'portable toolbox' of skills.

Knowing you're in the same boat as thousands of other Angelenos may be of some comfort if you've been laid off, cashed out or otherwise pushed into a new line of work.

But probably not much.

More people in L.A. are changing careers more often than ever before, local economists and human resource professionals say, and it's not by accident.

Technology, changes in government spending and growing pressure on companies to meet shareholder demands all have conspired to create a new employment atmosphere in which job security and loyalty are out, replaced by me-first employees with portable "tool boxes" of skills.

"Today, you better be loyal to yourself and what you're good at, because companies are not going to be loyal to you. Forget it," said career consultant Helen Harkness, author of the forthcoming book "The Career Chase."

Technology alone has eliminated many management positions, Harkness said, and increasingly sophisticated software will assume more workplace responsibility as time goes on. Already, number-crunching software and an $8-an-hour data-entry typist can accomplish much of what a relatively well-paid mid-level manager did just a few years ago, she said.

"It's almost impossible to get a job as mid-level manager anymore," Harkness said. "The jobs are just gone."

Similarly, employees who fail to stay abreast of the latest business technology like the Interact - can find themselves ousted by others who do, said Tom Lieser, associate director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, which tracks state and national business trends.

"It's causing some stress, by forcing people to keep their skills up-to-date," Lieser said. "You're always looking behind your back to see what's gaining on you."

Employees at publicly traded companies are under added pressure from shareholders who want to keep profits up and grow stock value. Shareholders have little patience for a chief executive who can't come up with the goods, Lieser said.

As a result, neither company executives nor the employees beneath them feel safe.

"The one thing that's really changed from several decades ago is the pressure to perform in terms of stock prices. Shareholders are the No. 1 constituency and have to be satisfied," Lieser said.

That makes all classes of employees vulnerable to cutbacks.

Some factors contributing to this intense performance environment are specific to Southern California - but not without precedent. The end of the Cold War and cuts in U.S. defense spending came as a major blow to the region's work force, much the way retooling and resulting job cuts at auto plants impacted Detroit in the 1980s.

In both cases, initial job losses in one industry were eventually felt throughout the economy.

When defense spending plummeted after the Cold War, L.A.-area "real estate prices weakened, financial institutions lost business. It even impacted professions like law and public accounting," Lieser said.

With no industry and no employment category safe under these conditions, "it created a whole new mentality," said Jerry Houser, director of the USC Career Center. "People were forced to rethink their job paradigms."

As a result, Houser said, employees are gaining core skills they can take with them from one job to the next, regardless of what field they may currently be in. "They're developing their own personal toolboxes," he said.

A successful employee today must take an entrepreneurial approach to their career, determining what skills they need or think they will need, and then setting about to acquire them, Houser said.

"If you're not on a learning curve in your job, if you've plateaued and you don't see any way to get on a learning curve, then you are in trouble," agreed Harkness. "Security is how skillful you are and who will pay for you to learn it."

These changes have not been lost on those entering the job market, Houser said.

A USC survey in 1988 found the top concern of graduating students in evaluating a potential employer was job security, he said. The same survey conducted this year found job security had dropped to 10th place, out of 20 criteria.

What that says, Houser believes, is that students no longer expect security in any job, and therefore make their decisions based on other factors.

"That's an indication that students are seeing parents, aunts and uncles being shifted around and don't want to be caught in the same trap," he said. "They've seen enough to know there's no life-long contract anymore. It doesn't matter who you are, or what industry you're in. There's just no guarantee."